


Too Late and Long Ago

by naye



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Married Character, Pre-Canon, Speculation, Wordcount: 100-500, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 21:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naye/pseuds/naye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two lives caught up in the tides of history.</p><p><i>The engineer's husband wanted to stay by her side.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Late and Long Ago

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Aoi24's prompt](http://naye.livejournal.com/799901.html?thread=7531933#t7531933) "Fallen Empire".

The engineer's husband wanted to stay by her side.

He argued with her, all pride and strength at first - how could he leave his wife? How could he let her face this by herself when he was a man, and a capable fighter, and had sworn himself to her forever?

But her wisdom was greater than his pride, and she just smiled at him - a sad, worn smile that was but a shadow of the radiant grin he had first fallen in love with, and placed their child in his arms.

Then he was reduced to begging, to clinging to an impossible hope that they could all escape together.

She was strong enough to shake her head.

They would come for her, and they would not stop, even if they had to chase her across the whole broken world. What she had helped create for them - what she had turned around and helped hide away from them - it was something they would stop at nothing to find.

He knew that. He knew that, and still he wanted her to run with him - wanted to do anything to keep her by his side one more day, and then one more after that, the rest of the world be damned.

"I won't run," she said, as he had known she would. But her iron resolve could not hide the sorrow in her dark eyes as she gently touched his face one last time, wiping away the tears there. "I have too many regrets already; too many lives..." She stopped her words before they could choke her voice. "Promise me that your lives won't be added to them?"

He could not have nodded if not for the warmth of the small, sleeping body he held in his arms. "I promise."

Relief made her sag against him for a moment, and then she looked up at him, and for the first time he saw some of the fear she must be feeling. "I want you to be safe, but where--."

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'll go to the sea."

The newly uncharted sea. Nobody could follow there - but nobody knew what awaited anyone venturing beyond the horizon anymore. It would take all of his strength, all of his skill - everything he had been willing to give her, he could still give their child.

Her eyes went wide for a moment, then his resolution was rewarded by a grin much like the one he remembered. "Yes. There, you can be free."

She believed in him. He would not fail her. "We can," he said, and then there was no more time for words, just one last moment with the three of them, before the tides of history swept them apart and the new rulers tried to erase every sign of their existence.

But he had promised, and nothing - not time, not laws, not the sea itself - could extinguish their inherited will. And one day, they would be remembered.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very, very, _very_ intrigued by the Blank Century, and everything that happened to put the World Government in power... We know they erased the past to hide it; we know there were Bigass Weapons involved, and we know absolutely nothing else at all. So of course now I'm making stuff up that's maybe _vaguely_ possible if you interpret the meta in a particular way? Maybe. (Predicting Oda is _not going to happen_.)
> 
> Anyway. The spirit of D has been there _all along_, and if the Ds were not somehow involved in the whole world altering (world shattering?) events I will eat my hat.


End file.
